Ho Chi Minh City and the Cu Chi Tunnels

Having booked the flight to Ho Chi Minh upon entering Vietnam, Kelsey and I caught an early morning flight on day 3. The flight left at 8 in the morning and we arrived in Ho Chi Minh, which I will now start calling Saigon for typing reasons, at 10. This left us with a full day of exploring the city.

We originally decided to devote the day to a walking tour. This seemed like a really great idea because it's a way to see a lot of the city in 4 hours, but Saigon was somehow nearly impossible for us to navigate.

Anway, the walking tour started at Pho 2000, a restaurant at which Bill Clinton had eaten during a trip to Vietnam:

The pho was absolutely excellent, as was most of the pho that we ate the entire trip. Unfortunately, due to navigation problems, we were at the wrong Pho 2000 restuarant. Anyway, the walking tour continued and we did manage to find a market which was located on the tour. We bought a lot of nice things. I got some shirts and a pair of shorts, because it was really hot. Kelsey bought a Vietamese dress, among a few other things:

Up next on the tour was a roundabout with a statue located in the center. It looks like the roundabout is about 5 lanes wide all around, so it's somewhat daunting. Luckily, we knew the rules for crossing streets in Vietnam. The above all most important rule is to walk a slow, unchanging pace because motorists are especially skilled at dodging obstacles.

Upon crossing, we had a great view of the city and a relatively isolated place to hang out:

There was one vendor who was trying to sell us these lighters. We couldn't get him to go away until we started claiming that we were Korean and only spoke to him in our limited Korean. Somehow, this actually worked. We continued on our way to an art museum that was closed after getting lost some more, and then we found a welcoming sight:Located in the photo is a blue, white, and green sign that says 'Family Mart'. These convenience stores are littered across Korea, and it was amazing for us to find one in Vietnam. A policeman outside wouldn't let me take a photo, so I sniped one from a distance.

The rest of the day was spent attempting to do the walking tour, then giving up and going to get some coffee and hanging out. We also got some pizza and did some more shopping, but it was a quiet evening in preparation for our trip to the Cu Chi Tunnels.

These tunnels are pretty famous because of their use during the Vietnam war, and we booked a tour to go see them the next day. Our bus left about 8 again, but again that included an hour or so of circling around various hotels until the bus was full. Again the drive was a long time and included an intermission at a gift shop. This time it was a shop where the goods were manufactured by the handicapped, called handicapped handicrafts. They were EXTREMELY expensive.

The tour of the tunnels was really worth it, though. It was really interesting to see this part Vietnamese history and marvel at how small of tunnels these people crawled through and lived in.

Our tour started in a house like this:

Our guide talked a while about the war and the tunnels, and we watched an interesting propoganda video. The video described a series of soldiers called 'American Killer Heroes'. Very nice.

Our guide then showed us a series of booby traps used during combat, including this revolving trap door with a pungee pit below, which looks like it may leave a mark:

He also showed us where exhaust pipes would be place for cooking and how some of the entrances looked. Then, it was time to actually explore a few of the tunnels. We got to crawl through a few for at least dozens of feet. I found it very difficult due to my larger size than the average Vietnamese person. Here is a flash photograph I took of one of the tunnels:

The pictures I took from inside didn't turn out so well, but it seems that the best ones I have is of someone else from the tour standing in front of one:

I have no idea who this guy is, but thanks for posing for the picture, guy. I think my readers can tell how difficult it may be to travel the tunnels.

Next was more of a gift shop phase of the tour. They fed use some potato-like vegetables dipped in some sugary substance that was pretty decent. Kelsey decided to shoot one of the firearms that was available for a dollar per bullet. Here she is with an AK-47:

So that was the end to a nice tour. We snoozed again on the bus ride back and then were off the train station for much more adventure, which I will get to in the next post.